9 Work-At-Home. Success Keys

Transcription

2 If you re like most people with a home business, you are in one of three places: 1. You have been working your business for several months to a couple of years, and have yet to see a profit. 2. You have been working your business for several months to a couple of years, and have yet to see the income you had hoped for when you first began. OR 3. You have just started a business, and want to avoid becoming like either of the first two kinds of people! Whether you re just getting started, or have been going for a while and hit a brick wall, I would love to help you get moving in the right direction. Why? Because I can empathize. I struggled to make money online for over two and a half years. I bought this e-book and signed up for that course, and even joined a membership site run by a millionaire Internet Marketing guru, but all I ever had to show for it was a deficit in my PayPal account! More times than I can remember, I almost gave up on the whole thing. I told my husband that if he didn t like his job, he would just have to find another one or else live with it for the next fifteen years, because I was not going to try ONE SECOND LONGER to make money online! Then, things slowly began to shift. I started selling an e-book here and there. Small commission checks from my network marketing company started appearing in our mailbox. Google paid me my first $100 in Adsense royalties. Copyright 2013 by Emily Jacques. All rights reserved. Page 2

3 I began to learn from the mistakes I had made, and to rectify them. From my mistakes which are made, by the way, by thousands of other home business owners every day I was able to see a pattern for success. This report delineates what I consider to be the nine most critical keys for succeeding with your home business, whether it s Internet Marketing, network marketing, selling crafts at local flea markets, designing landscapes or homes, or health coaching. There are probably more keys you could add, but if you start with these nine, you will be 90% of the way there. Okay, enough introduction let s get on to the heart of the business matter! Key #1: Stay focused. I admit: this has been my sorest spot. I would decide the direction I wanted to take my online business, then get an from an Internet Marketer telling me to check out such-and-such e- book, or to sign up for so-and-so free course. I would buy the book, or go through the course, and my mind would start reeling from the possibilities. I would start a new blog, or change my mind about my original business intention. Pretty soon, I had a bunch of blogs, severe eye strain and a gradually shrinking business account. Can you relate? It s hard to stay focused when there are so many different directions to take in the work-at-home realm, especially when you do Internet Marketing. What s a person to do? I recommend taking three steps. First, list your passions, interests, hobbies and skills. Second, research your options as thoroughly as you can. Which kind, or kinds, of home business fit the things on your list? For example, if people are always coming to you for advice, you may consider doing some kind of Copyright 2013 by Emily Jacques. All rights reserved. Page 3

4 coaching. If everyone always raves about the scarves, hats and baby blankets you knit, you could sell your wares on ebay and/or write and sell an e-book of knitting patterns. I m a health nut who loves to write, so I began my online business with a natural health blog. Third, pick a business model and commit to it for a year. Learn everything you can about your particular business; read up on marketing strategies; and focus, focus, focus! Ignore information that does not relate to your business in some way. Sure, Guru #568 got rich in two years flipping websites, but that s because he focused. If you focus on what you re doing, you will eventually make good money, too and be happier doing it. Trust me when you try to do something you don t really care about, you will flop at it, no matter how much money other people are making with the thing. If you have yet to figure out what kind of home business you d like to try, check out my book, Home Sweet Work: 17 Ways To Make Money In Your Pajamas. It s in the Amazon Kindle store, but you don t have to have a Kindle to read it. Search amazon for free Kindle reading app to read it on your computer, phone, etc. Key #2: Budget. I once heard that the number two reason network marketers quit within three months of starting is that they run out of money. I m guessing that this is a top reason for failure in other home business models, as well. And there s really no excuse for it. A home business owner needs to have a budget in place, the same as the owner of a retail store or mechanic shop. And one nice thing about working a home business is that your budget will usually be much smaller than that of a brick-and-mortar business. Copyright 2013 by Emily Jacques. All rights reserved. Page 4

5 Once you decide on the business you re going to commit to, look at your regular household expenditures and figure out how much of your day job income you ll be able to set aside each month to put toward your business. If you start a network marketing business, you ll need to include your monthly autoship, then decide how many product samples and/or sales tools you will be purchasing every month, if any, on top of the autoship expense. (Hint: you can make it much easier on yourself in network marketing if you join a company that carries products similar to those which you are already buying, or know you should be buying.) For Internet Marketing, your basic expenditures will be webhosting, domain names, and probably an autoresponder service. When you first get started, you ll probably also want to invest $50 or $100 a month in an Internet Marketing course, and/or e-books related to your area of focus. If you re running a business providing a service locally, such as dog grooming or landscaping, you will want to set aside offline advertising money, and estimate how much money you will average in supply purchases each month. Once you set your budget, stick to it! And this will be much easier if you keep your focus tight instead of running after every shiny object you see. Key #3: Have a daily schedule. Even if you can only spare an hour per day to start, decide when that hour will be before you head out to your day job, after supper, during your three-year-old s nap and put it in your daily schedule. If you are a mother of small children, this schedule will change every six months. Be flexible, but make sure you fit in the allotted work time each day. Copyright 2013 by Emily Jacques. All rights reserved. Page 5

6 Why is this so critical? Why can t you just remember when to work your business? Well, some of us are self-disciplined enough to just remember (or, we ve been doing it so long it has become a habit). But many people don t have that self-discipline, or have so many other things going on that a thing needs to be written down if it s going to be accomplished. In addition, writing your home business hours into your schedule helps you to be consistent, and when you re consistent you greatly increase your chances of staying committed. What if you don t have large blocks of time when you can just sit down and work uninterrupted? Welcome to my world! My work schedule is scattered in small pockets throughout the day. I typically get about forty-five minutes of work done between 5:30 and 7:45 a.m. I usually do a little work mid-morning, around noon, and right before or after supper. When he was younger, I would have my son watch an educational DVD around two p.m., and so back then that was my largest block of time to work uninterrupted, about an hour. My schedule is open-ended, consisting of a list of items I need to get done that day, each item given a general time when I plan to do it. So you don t have to have every task written down with the exact time you re going to complete it, but you do have to have something on paper (or online, or on your Smartphone) to help keep you on track. Key #4: Choose your marketing funnels. Not being decided about how you re going to market your products or service is almost as problematic as not keeping your focus. Thanks to the Internet, there are a myriad of ways to market yourself and your business: blogging, blog commenting, Social Media, video, press releases, article directories, forums, podcasting, ezine advertising, Pay Per Click advertising, good ol newspaper advertising the list goes on. Copyright 2013 by Emily Jacques. All rights reserved. Page 6

7 But if you try to incorporate every single marketing strategy, or funnel, into your business, you will go crazy, broke, or both! Even if you outsource (see next key) your marketing, if you pay someone else to market using every single format out there, you may lose much more money than you ever make. So as you get ready to launch your business, consider which marketing funnels fit you best. Then, pick three to five of them and consistently work them. (If you re just starting out, pick two, get proficient at them, then add to them.) I love to write and I enjoy teaching and speaking, so I blog, write articles for directories, publish to Kindle, and make videos. Key #5: Outsource. Face it: there are parts to your business that you despise doing or don t know how to do. It may be bookkeeping, marketing, editing videos and audio files, or designing your websites and/or e- book covers. If so, find someone who will do at least one of your least favorite tasks, at a fee you can afford. For small things, like a blog header or e-book cover, there are many people on fiverr.com who will do a great job for you. For bookkeeping or other jobs that require a professional you can trust, well, find a professional you can trust. Some virtual assistant companies are very helpful in this regard. I don t outsource much. Yet. Right now, I outsource e-book and blog header designs to my husband. Jerry is not an official web designer, but he is a natural artist and has learned his way around Artweaver, an open-source design software. We save money, and I get to focus on what I do best and enjoy most: creating content. Copyright 2013 by Emily Jacques. All rights reserved. Page 7

8 But don t be discouraged if you have to pay to outsource. Many home business owners will tell you that they wish they would have begun outsourcing much sooner. Just be sure to stick within your budget. Key #6: Be everywhere. If you re familiar with Pat Flynn, yes, I borrowed this phrase directly from him (although I have a feeling he heard it from somebody else). But in return, I m giving credit where credit is due. Also, I m going to give his blog a plug: SmartPassiveIncome is a great resource for making money on the Internet. Be everywhere is the premise that the more places you can be found, the more people will find you. Online, being everywhere includes having your own blog, writing guest posts at other people s blogs in your niche, writing articles for directories, making videos, podcasting, participating in forums, commenting on other people s blogs, etc. Offline, this can include Meetup and networking events, trade shows, newspaper ads, and so on. But to truly be everywhere, you should participate in the occasional offline event if your business is mainly online, and you should have at least a little web presence even if your business is conducted mainly offline. This doesn t mean you have to try to focus on everything all the time, but you want to appear in different places at different times to get more exposure for your business. So while it may seem I am contradicting my advice in Key #4 about marketing funnels, in truth I am not. Your marketing funnels are the ones you consistently work at every day, or at least every week. However, you can be everywhere by spreading out the various activities over a couple month s time. Copyright 2013 by Emily Jacques. All rights reserved. Page 8

9 Key #7: Be consistent. If you want to make money with your business, you need to work on it consistently. Preferably, you will work on it every week day. If you can only manage to work on it for three days a week, work on it for three days every single week. Be consistent with your daily schedule, as well. Every day that you work on your business, you need to include marketing in your schedule. Content or product creation, or providing your service, does not necessarily need to happen every business day, but it does need to appear in your schedule on a consistent basis. Now, I will grant you this: some business models allow you to become inconsistent once in a while and still get you results. Network marketing is one such model. For example, back in 2010 I was suffering from severe and chronic eyestrain. One month that summer I went on a computer fast, hoping that would bring healing. (It helped, but only temporarily. I have Irlen Syndrome, and although taking vitamin C supplements has helped a lot, I still have to severely limit my computer time.) By that time, I probably had over 100 posts on my natural health blog and several other websites linking in. Because of the work I had already done, I continued to get traffic, and ended up sponsoring four people into my MLM business that month, even though I did nothing with the blog during that time. That being said, it s not smart to plan to be inconsistent. If you can still make money with that plan, you will not make nearly as much as you can by being consistent. And there is no greater motivation to keep plugging away even on the bad days than to see a gradual increase of income. Copyright 2013 by Emily Jacques. All rights reserved. Page 9

10 Key #8: Be scalable. I m not sure the word scalable existed twenty years ago, so if you ve never heard the term, don t worry about it. You re still smart. ;) It refers to having a business that allows you to leverage your time, knowledge and skills. Oops, another business buzz word: leverage. That means you set up or, in the case of network marketing, join a system where you can earn money that is hugely disproportionate to the time you spend working on your business. For example, say you ve got a great talent for making crafts, even creating new craft ideas. If you spend all day making crafts and marketing them on ebay, you will get paid once for the time and skills you put into making each craft that you sell. While you can earn a nice side income doing this, you limit your income because you can only make so many crafts every day. But what if you wrote and illustrated (or had someone else illustrate remember outsourcing!) an e-book that taught people how to make unique crafts? You would write the book only once, but then potentially have people purchase it day after day, even while you were sleeping. This is a much more scalable business model, with a lot more leverage. Now, you do have to be consistent with marketing, but generally daily online marketing requires much less work than spending all day making crafts. Key #9: Be patient. You ve heard the stories: Mr. Rich made $8,000 in his first thirty days online, and within six months was making $30,000 per month. A couple went crazy building their MLM business, and were making $15,000 a month four months after starting. Miss Novelist was a millionaire within eighteen months of putting her stories up on Kindle. Copyright 2013 by Emily Jacques. All rights reserved. Page 10

11 Yes, overnight success stories do happen. They are not all scams or lies to try to get you to buy something. But you need to understand this hard fact: They are rare. I don t mean to say that you shouldn t go for six figures in six months. It is doable, if you re willing to do what it takes to get there. But at the same time, you need to remember that life happens, you may not have the same time or skills that XYZ Guru had when he first started, that the old proverb is more or less true for most of us: Good things come to those who wait. Even if you apply all of the other eight keys we ve discussed in this report, you may still not reach your income goals in the time period you were aiming for. That doesn t make you a failure, or mean you should give up because you will never get anywhere. That makes you normal. The fact is, most people who start any kind of home business and stick out the slow times end up profiting very nicely within two to five years. Ask yourself this question: If it takes me two or three years to reach my business income goals, will it have been worth it? I think we can agree that the answer is yes, it will have been worth it. Ask yourself another question: where will you be two or three years from now if you don t work on your business? That s right, you ll be exactly where you are at this very moment! Be focused, be consistent, and be patient. You will get the results you ve been hoping for. It s time to take action. Need some ideas (and many of them are scalable and offer serious time and money leverage) on how to make money from home? Remember my book, Home Sweet Work: 17 Ways To Make Copyright 2013 by Emily Jacques. All rights reserved. Page 11

12 Money In Your Pajamas. It includes one money-making method that many people are using to make six and seven figures a year by working only a few hours a week (and no, it s not network marketing and it s not a scam). Interested in seeing the schedule of an online marketing pioneer who makes a mid- to high-six figures a year by working only three hours per day? Get his free guide here. Congratulations on finishing this report that means you are a success story waiting to happen! So get out there, take action, and tell me your testimony when you start reaching your goals. Get more great info to help you simplify your life, delivered straight to your inbox! Click here to subscribe to my blog. Hope to see you there soon, Emily Copyright 2013 by Emily Jacques. All rights reserved. Page 12